


The Hero of Akuze

by Adanska



Series: built on a history of scars [4]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Original Character Death(s), gratuitous making up of Alliance Military protocals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:48:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adanska/pseuds/Adanska
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stared across the moon’s surface, breather hissing arhythmically in her ears</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hero of Akuze

She stared across the moon's surface, breather hissing arhythmically in her ears, Jakor at her side, and a hundred marines at their backs.

" _They really need to stop giving us cake walks,_ " Jakor's voice crackled over their suit radios like the dried out brush under their boots. " _We're N4's, for fuck's sake; we got better shit to do._ "

She took a moisture saturated breath. " _Stuff it, Jakor,_ " she ordered, and started across the rocky desert of Akuze.

  
  
He smiled at her, all broken teeth and blood illuminated in her one working shoulder lamp. "What I wouldn't give for some cake right about now," he teased; someone's scream reverb'ed through the tunnels, the ground quivering around them.

Their path trailed behind them, vividly red. "Yeah," she agreed, "Me too" and pulled them three feet further.

  
  
She lay on her belly, breathing slow and shallow, a lock of hair curling like blood over her eye, her back and brain screaming long and shrill.

"I suddenly regret all my life choices," Jakor rasped, his brown skin pallid like hers, sweat blooming on every inch like hers.

"Stuff it, Shaughnessy," she rasped back, twitching her fingers until, finally, her second finger stood out higher than her first and third, her lips twisting as he laughed so hard he groaned, implants burning like fire beneath their skin.

  
  
The crevice was too narrow. Breath hitching, she turned her head to the side, spitting out blood and bits of enamel, feeling more drip drip drip from her nose, a congealed stalactite before she brushed it away, smelling nothing but blood, rock, and fire.

Her ribs burned, a constellation of fire from a grenade thrown in too close of quarters (she was doing better that the bastard that dropped it, far enough back to only get perff'ed instead of shredded; faced with that creature, she'd go out that way, too).

She crawled, front and back screaming, a heavy weight dragging on her hips.

Behind her was silence. “Stay with me, Jakor!” she ordered. She kept crawling.

  
  
"Holy shit! This is the best thing ever!" Charging up, energy crawling over his skin, Jakor targeted the dummy on the highest ledge and _pulled_ himself closer, his boots nearly clipping her as he arced overhead. "Kris, you gotta try this!"

Tracking his progress, she clenched her fist, blue light crackling; as he collided with the target, she flung out a shockwave, sending him flying back to the floor.

The counter ticked over three points, one for him and two for her; she grinned.

"Try what, falling on your face?" she hollered, and charged away, Jakor right on her heels.

  
  
They found five of the scientists; when the ground opened up before them, sounding like hell screaming in their ears, they knew they wouldn't find the rest.

  
  
She didn't _almost_ shoot the marines that found her, thirty hours after landing; she shot them, hit three centre mass with her futzing pistol and the only thing that saved them is the shielding that crackled to life immediately. They raised arms, but they couldn't see her, couldn't see the tiny tiny too fucking tiny hole she'd just barely scraped her shoulders through (and she had no idea how she was going to get Jakor's fucking man shoulders through, has been entertaining just chipping away with her gun as she wrenched her body forward inch by bloody inch).

"Captain Shino, Alliance military!" the young woman taking point called, her omni tool blinding as it broadcast her credentials. "Put down your weapon and surrender."

"Pretty sure marines don't surrender," Kris wheezed, and hissed when the lights all swung to pin her down like a rat.

"What's your name, soldier?" And there was too much pity in that voice that she just couldn't focus on so she just said "First Sergeant Kris Shepard and Gunny Sergeant Jakor Shaughnessy, sir. I've got Shaughnessy strung up behind me, he needs medical bad."

"Is there anyone else," Shino asked as her soldiers worked to get Kris free and Kris didn’t need to answer because they both knew the answer: No.

  
  
David found her in the makeshift morgue. She was sitting in an old folding chair, her bandaged fingers resting gently in her lap. The eye closest to him was swaddled in bandages, but he knew what she was looking at; the dead lay before them, stacked like cordwood.

"From what we've recovered, you're the one responsible for getting half the team out of the kill box and into the cave system." She didn't flinch, didn't acknowledge him in any way; two steps closer, and he could see the stark lighting glinting off something in her hands. "You tried your best to get your men--and they were your men, even though First Lieutenant Freeman was still alive and cognizant until hour twenty one according to his omnitool--through the tunnels alive, using tactics that the academy will be studying in the future. You crawled through miles of tunnels dragging a fellow soldier behind you, and demanded medical attention for him first even though you had to know he had been dead for hours." For four hours and eighteen minutes, according to his omnitool, and finally, he had elicited a response; her fingers clenched, bone white, the thin chain of the tags cutting deep. Coming to a stop beside her, he joined her at staring at Shaughnessy, Gunnery Sergeant Jakor's body. "You're being jumped up three N ratings for this, providing you pass the physical tests once we get back to Sol; Shaughnessy will also be awarded a posthumous N7 ranking, as will Peters and Nguyen and Brown.

"You're going to be a legend for this, Shepard," he said gently, standing at rest. "People are going to bring up Akuze as though you're a vid hero, with no regards as to your personal feelings; even--no, _especially_ \--your fellow soldiers, and you can't even deck them for it."

"Thanks for the heads up. Sir,” she whispered, and they sat and stood in silence for the racks and racks of personnel who did not make it off Akuze alive.

  
  
"Hey, I hear your colony born," someone said as they sat beside her, straddling the bench. Brown hair, brown skin, and eyes of pure silver ringed by green and brown; another colony whelp, Kris realised, inclining her head slightly.

He grinned, teeth crooked but white. "Same here. Jakor Shaughnessy," he introduces, holding a scarred hand out. "Us colony rats ought to stick together."

"Kris Shepard," she replied, and took his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, made up almost everything about the Alliance Military. And Akuze.


End file.
